Slow (10 min) start-up BEFORE login screen

johnhoh: thanks for this information. Much appreicated. I did what you suggested on the startup that took so long ... and the one that was quick. Two screen shots attached. I could not find a text export option.

Is hiberfil.sys supposed to be over 6Mb in size? Mine is.

I wonder why the reports are so different after a Safe Mode start, then restart to normal mode?

Thanks!

since you are on a desktop you might as well disable hibernation. That's what hiberfil is. you can delete that file and disable hibernation here...

Hibernate - Enable or Disable - Windows 7 Help Forums

btw it would not hurt to clean up your hard drive, with this command

start > run > %SystemRoot%\System32\Cmd.exe /c Cleanmgr /sageset:65535 & Cleanmgr /sagerun:65535 > check all > enter

based on the high number of very high duration procmon line items, I'm not sure this process monitor method is gonna bear fruit. Lets set it aside for now and maybe come back to it. Instead of just one or two real slow items, its as though everything is being slowed down. Based on safe mode being so much quicker, the first thing that comes to mind is you have a bad driver, since safe mode only uses basic drivers. Is your device manager clean? (sorry if you posted about it earlier). The video card is a common driver problem, so you might try updating your video driver to the basic windows vga driver, then reboot. If that does nothing, definitely try what Jack posted in #21 if you have not already

johnhoh said:

... Instead of just one or two real slow items, its as though everything is being slowed down. Based on safe mode being so much quicker, the first thing that comes to mind is you have a bad driver, since safe mode only uses basic drivers. Is your device manager clean? (sorry if you posted about it earlier). The video card is a common driver problem, so you might try updating your video driver to the basic windows vga driver, then reboot. If that does nothing, definitely try what Jack posted in #21 if you have not already

Johnhoh: thanks for that. I did all you stated. There appear to be no drivers out-of-date. Note the attached. NVIDIA graphics card seems to be update. I am on a dual-monitor system and use Display Fusion to manage both desktops.

You are right though about everything being slowed down. But let me clarify.

- Start in Safe Mode: time to login screen = 45 sec
- Restart in normal mode: time to login screen = 49 sec
- Restart again in normal mode: time to login screen = 18 min (last reboot)

Question: Is it normal to take a couple of minutes to shut down with a restart command?

So, it's not just that Safe Mode loads with minimal drivers, it seems that something is triggered (loaded?) after normal restart happens the second time.

Oddly, I found a crash dump during the time yesterday I was having trouble. I attached it as a TXT file if anyone cares to review it for a clue.

Layback Bear: thanks. I will do that soon, but I cannot afford the time this morning if the restart takes 18 minutes as it did yesterday.

I'm perplexed, and if this keeps up much longer I will just have to buy a new machine (groan).

When restarting from safe mode, your system boots with a need to find and install specific (non-safe-mode) drivers. When you restart in normal mode, it already knows what drivers it needs. I'll have to think about what that means, why would windows be better at detecting and installing a driver than reloading an old driver, but a failing hard drive might do that, or a problem loading its IDE controller driver. What you might try is just like you loaded the basic VGA driver and rebooted (to no effect), try doing that with the IDE controller driver - replace your IDE driver in normal mode with the same driver that windows uses for safe mode. Then again the issue could be unrelated to this line of thinking. Recommend you follow Jack's idea, and also use msconfig to enable boot logging then check your event viewer after that.

Just realized your specs are incomplete. Would like to see motherboard and hard drive specs in detail.

System Info - See Your System Specs - Windows 7 Help Forums

fyi I can't read your screenshot. Probably best to save your screenshots in png mode and/or with much higher resolution

I would try booting with the USB disk drive unplugged. Then if that does not help, then boot into safe mode and look at the device manager IDE ATA controller section and compare it to the above jpeg. You'll see that it looks different, that it will not show any AMD line items when in safe mode. Make note of what drivers it does show, then boot normally so it goes back to showing your AMD line items within the IDE section, and right click your way into replacing those AMD drivers with same the generic ones you saw in safe mode, then reboot. If the reboot goes well you have determined that your hard drive is the problem.

Callender said:

EDIT 2: Also from your process monitor screenshot the only third party service shown is carbonite backup. Services or drivers are possible causes so maybe try excluding carbonite from starup?

Callender: thanks as usual for the input, but I'm confused (not the first time) -- Carbonite isn't involved in the restart-to-login-screen is it? Wouldn't that be after the login, which is not the issue?